


look, who needs protocol, anyway

by raven (singlecrow)



Category: Star Trek: Lower Decks (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:49:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28294101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singlecrow/pseuds/raven
Summary: That time they found a dog in a Jeffries tube, and Tendi took, like, so many selfies! Shut up, Mariner, it was super cute, okay.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 34
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2020





	look, who needs protocol, anyway

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brodeurbunny30](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brodeurbunny30/gifts).



It's halfway through their first band practice, convened in advance of the USS _Cerritos_ First Annual Lower Decks Rockin' Interstellar Talent Contest, that Rutherford hears a weird noise in the Jeffries tubes. "I don't think three rehearsals and thinking good thoughts is gonna cut it," Tendi is wailing, while Mariner explains that if she wants to win first prize, three days' extra shore leave and vouchers for the Risan bar, restaurant, spa or sexually-transmitted disease testing centre of your choice, she needs to _commit_ to their cover version of "Gagh Gagh Gagh Qapla'", the Klingon sleeper hit of 2364. Rutherford slips off in the middle of Mariner's angry air guitar solo and doesn't come back for a while.

The weird noise, it turns out, is coming from a small scrawny furry… thing. Rutherford carries it out into the cargo bay with it squirming in his arms. "What _is_ that?" Tendi asks. "Is it, like, an Earth animal or something?"

"What, I don't know," Mariner says, "I grew up in space, like normal people, _Boimler_ "––which is why Boimler and Rutherford have to explain that this is a dog, like an actual dog this time and not a scary genetic experiment, with ordinary mitochondria and no tendency to eat your face with its face. It's even one particular kind of dog, because dogs come in kinds apparently, though how each kind can have babies with all the other kinds is a mystery from what Tendi can see on her padd. Maybe they make spores, or fission into five identical smaller dogs.

"A Jack Russell terrier," Boimler says, "aren't you, yeah you are, who's a perfect baby puppy-dog, you are!"

"Stop embarrassing it, Boimler, you're not its real mom," Mariner says, trying to take it off Rutherford, who's giving it a replicator sausage. "Like, not to rain on this whole love-fest but where the hell did this thing come from?"

"I guess it snuck aboard from Deep Space Nine when we were last docked," Boimler says. "People keep pets there, the little guy must have run off."

"Cool, great, back to practice or nobody's getting drunk or laid this year," Mariner says, but Tendi didn't want to shout-sing Klingon chart hits anyway and the dog is pretty cute, actually. It finishes off Rutherford's replicator sausage and begs for another one with its little ears all sharp and alert and its paws in the air. Boimler generates a rubber ball out of the replicator and tosses it across the cargo bay.

"Who's a good puppy," he says, as the dog brings back the ball, "you are!"

"Hey," Mariner says. "Are you telling me that thing does tricks?"

"Maybe," Boimler says, and then, "Oh, _no_."

It does do tricks. They do not win the talent contest. Instead they get a lecture from Dr T'Ana about harbouring a potentially dangerous biohazard and then they get sent through an eight-hour decontamination cycle, which does at least mean they miss delta shift's prize-winning ska band performance of "We Also Live In A Hallway But At Least We Get To Be Awake In The Daytime, Losers". 

It could be worse, though. They get some cute selfies when they're stuck in decontamination and Jack-the-human talks the captain into letting them keep Jack-the-dog, at least until they dock at Ceres IV and he can go live on a farm with Jack-the-human's mom. And delta shift never make it to Risa in the end, on account of the _Cerritos_ being partially digested by a Kuiper belt anomaly, so all in all, it's not a bad day.

Actually, Tendi thinks, none of the days here are bad.


End file.
